[Kayne]: It' wonderfull :)

[windowframe]: Tempy, you mind if I link this place from O.o ?

[Aradon Templar]: Go ahead ^_^

[Aradon Templar]: I've got two new ones, but I'm waiting to put those up until Wednesday. Kinda a surprise thing :)

[windowframe]: O.o

[Kayne]: *is curieus* :)

[Kayne]: bleh , silvie has O.o , templar has this , I think I'm going to do something wioth paint :p

[windowframe]: O.o

[Aradon Templar]: What'll the page be?

[Aradon Templar]: /me pokes Kayne.  You given up? Or have a whole collection of paint stuffs to show us?

[windowframe]: Templar dude, did you get a dev art account in the end?

[Aradon Templar]: Yeah. I haven't put anything on it, though, except the banner. Which still gave me hosting problems -.- But its up, now. Test1... See? It has full screen :)

[windowframe]: ... shit ... i forgot something >_< Deviant art doesn't allow remote link - dev links won't work in et.

[Aradon Templar]: What do you mean?

[windowframe]: the pic at test1, wont show up, deviant art don't like other sites stealing their bandwidth, so their links don't work outside their domain.

[Aradon Templar]: It doesn't?? o.O It works on my comp...

[windowframe]: but not on anyone elses.

[Aradon Templar]: Bah. It looks all lovely, too...

[windowframe]: does now though ^^

[Aradon Templar]: ^__^

[Aradon Templar]: By the end of this weekend, I'm going to make this page much more friendly to low-bandwidth people. Yes, Silvie, this is especially for you ^_^ Thumbnail versions will be available, and you can click on them to increase to normal size.

[Aradon Templar]: Yay, did them all at once ^_^

[windowframe]: ahhh, wheeeeee!!! *glomps Templar*

[Aradon Templar]: Gonna be a pain to upload more pics but oh well ^_^

[Aradon Templar]: Ah, I have completed image hosting thingies, so now all the thumbnails link to their pictures better. NOTE TO ALL: The picture sizes have increased by almost an inch in size, and blurriness has been eliminated, so it may be worthwhile to look at the images again. The sizes really do make a difference in the impact, I believe.

[Deadly_DNA_Girl]: those pictures are nice

[Aradon Templar]: thanks ^_^

[windowframe]: hey, Templar, why not you be on messe now/

[Aradon Templar]: I just got on... Like three seconds ago. Heh, and you just logged on, for me.

[tenshi-ryuu]: My god... what did you use to make these.... they're awsome...

[Aradon Templar]: Special program available for computer. I'll put the website up for reference, if you want to download it.

[tenshi-ryuu]: ya... ty... i downloaded it but its not installing... X'(.... oh well...

[Aradon Templar]: Really? It should work. Whats the problem with it?

[tenshi-ryuu]: it says the system file is not suitable of running MSDOS or windows applications...

[Aradon Templar]: hmm... Maybe you should delete it and redownload...

[tenshi-ryuu]: maybe...

[tenshi-ryuu]: nope... still doesn't work...

[tenshi-ryuu]: YA... I FIXED IT... yay... i made some really cool arts...

[Aradon Templar]: w00t :)

[tenshi-ryuu]: :)

[Neko the Kitty]: will you make me one?

[Aradon Templar]: Sure. What kind of scene do you want?

[Neko the Kitty]: I want...hm...let's see...how about an Ocean View? Like, rocks out of the ocean and the sun is setting, seagulls in the air. :)

[Aradon Templar]: No seagulls, but I can do the rest :P

[Neko the Kitty]: okay cool

[Aradon Templar]: Hey Silvie, if you see any of these that you think you'd like to edit and such, feel free. Just let me know, if you do.

[windowframe]: O.o okieshhh. mmm...just a suggestion..split all these images between two pages? *has been sitting bere 5 minutes, and they're still not all loaded O.<*twItch*

[Aradon Templar]: Oiy... I completely missed that suggestion. Me sowwies.... *splits*

[Aradon Templar]: Teh new page is up... And methinks I'm gonna have a new piece up there soon. Finally got the effect of sunbeams I was wanting, though the method was rather random.

[Neko the Kitty]: which one was the one u made me?

[Aradon Templar]: The one called 'Ocean View', on the second page.

[Neko the Kitty]: oh yeah

[Aradon Templar]: If the load time is poor due to all the pictures being on one page, I'll split it. Just let me know.

[Aradon Templar]: My apologies for the linear qualities of the newest picture, Terragen seemed to throw a fit when I made it :/

[iippo]: Hmm, is it bmp for a reason when everything else is a jpg? No wait... When you click the link it's a bmp and when you just keep the mouse over it, it's a jpg. Heh, strangeness.

[Aradon Templar]: I probably titled it wrong :P

[iippo]: But was it supposed to be a bmp? Everything else is gifs or jpgs. And could that be afecting the "linear qualities."

[Aradon Templar]: They all originally are bmp's, actually. Terragen produces only bmp's. I simply convert to save on the size, since ET doesn't like large images. The linear qualities, I dunno why. I think it's the type of rendering I chose. The format has nothing to do with the straight-edged landforms, though, since it always rendered like that before it was even saved as a file.

[iippo]: Ok.

[Aradon Templar]: Attempted a Fanart picture of LotR on the last one. Scene would be Gandalf's arrival to Helm's Deep. Didn't get the clouds exactly right or anything, but I thought it turned out decently. If anyone wants to add Gandalf and the Rohirrim to the picture, feel free :P

[iippo]: Aaaaahh, that last one is excellent. *is really inclined to wish to make some kind of co-operative thingie with Tempie doing the bg and me doing the fg, what evr it would be*

[Aradon Templar]: Feel free to edit whatever you wish from here, and add whatever, or request certain backgrounds. I'd be thrilled if teh iippo made something uber with some stuff I helped with ^^'

[iippo]: *squeals very lightly with exitement* I haven't done that in ages... :P And now that I've found my lovely uni computers have GIMP, I can spend days and nights, dappling... ^^;

[Aradon Templar]: ^_^ *would be interested in seeing what iippo comes up with* Go for it :D

[Aradon Templar]: And for the latest update from Terragen, the 'weird glow effect'! A bug found and exploited by one of the leading Terragen users, the weird glow effect allows me to sacrifice the sky's integrity (which I hid by the mountains) for a weird glow of any color following along the ground.

[iippo]: Wow, that's oddness. Yet coolness. And I haven't forgotten about my co-op, it's just on hold due to fast-paced uni-life. Maybe around Christmas... You could enter that glow thing into the Official Halloween Art Contest. Show the great public the hidden Terragenist.

[Aradon Templar]: Considering doing a Halloween Art contest entry, though it'll be different from that one. More spooky.

[Aradon Templar]: And I'm doing a Costume Entry, maybe. I'm dressing up this year for a concert.

[Aradon Templar]: Correction- Halloween entry is the most recent picture. Still unsure about the costume entry- I'm wearing it on the 29th, so it may be closed by then.

[iippo]: I'm possibly in costume on the 30th, the third years are doing a fundraising Halloween party and the entry is cheaper if dressed up... ^_^; Might not even go, on the other hand.

[Aradon Templar]: Meh, the costume I dressed up in last night looked awesome, and we got pictures, but my mom used the non-digital camera, so we have to get them developed before I can get them up on ET, so I couldn't put in an entry...

[Aradon Templar]: Did a nighttime scene that actually turned out decently well. The larger version had to be .gif to fit on ET, so it's of slightly lower quality, especially in the sky. If any of you want to add 'ickle star thingies', feel free. I can host somewhere else the large image so it's full quality, too, if you'd like.

[iippo]: Have I mentioned that I expect you to enter the monthly month contest?

[Aradon Templar]: I'll enter it once I get Terragen 2. Before that, I can't get enough month-like details (like trees without many leaves). Once Terragen 2 comes out, I'll enter it most months :D

[Aradon Templar]: Er. Is anyone having trouble viewing the images in an orderly fashion where they all fit seamlessly? They ought to look like a box with lots of smaller boxes of images, yet on mine the lines are a bit too long...

[windowframe]: uhm... well, it's not quite a box shape, the last line doesn't have enough images, but they all line up seamlessly

[iippo]: Same with me.

[Aradon Templar]: Humm... I think it was different for me because I had a different dpi for a while. Dunno. But the lines were two images too long, so they broke into a second line beneath that had a huge gap. But it's fixed now.

[iippo]: Well that happens to me if I squint my window. Maybe you shouldn't make them as one line, put in the edit-box just one after another as a long long line so it will break nicely for everybody having anykind of window-size.

[Aradon Templar]: It's what I had before, but got kind of annoying for a few reasons, but mainly the titles didn't correspond to their row sometimes. But I think I will change it back.

[iippo]: Mmm, that is a very fair point...

[Aradon Templar]: But really, nobody's gonna nitpick over these. But I wonder if there's a way to label them that wasn't so... vertical.

[iippo]: The sun in Sundown looks... strangely pixelated. Is that a Terragen-thing or something up in my end?

[windowframe]: it's uberly pixelated for me, too

[Aradon Templar]: That one's Terragen's fault. Not exactly sure why it did that, even when I put the atmospheric accuracy to maximum. I think it has to do with the small corona and the sun not looking circular anyways, so they just pixelated everything. So... none of your computers' faults.

[Aradon Templar]: Hrmm... There's something that seems to separate my works from those on the official gallery (at http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/gallery/gallerymain.php), and I can't figure out what it is that they're doing that make theirs look nicer than mine. Anything you guys can see in those that make it look better?

[windowframe]: Uhmmm... more detail. :\ *shrug* Some of yours look as good as some of those, fourth row, closest to the right, for instance. They use distorted perspectives, which adds interest... but yeah, I can't quite put my finger on it, but some of them just seem to have more 'little detail' - more textures, nigger range of colours, or something.

[Aradon Templar]: Oh, I figured it was something to do with that. They use a) better surface maps and b) masking. I'll see about improving the surface maps, but I don't think I can manage the masking. Last time I tried, it failed miserably...

[iippo]: I suppose it's just practice, that's always why other people do better pictures than others.

[iippo]: Hun, I wanna ask a favour... Wanna enter with me to Chaos Sun's Polar Opposite 2 so you'd do a background and me the figure?

[Aradon Templar]: Sure. I can't say that it will blend very well, or that it will be possible to create the type of scenario you'd like, but I'll give it a shot and get things as close to precise as possible :) I'll begin on the background whenever you tell me what kind of things you'd like. After that, it shouldn't take too long to get a general image, and then who knows how long of us talking on MSN or somewhere to get it exactly right :P

[Aradon Templar]: In terms of surface colors, does this one look nicer? It's not meant to be a nice view or landscape or anything scenic, merely to display the colors and textures and stuff. (http://elftown.lysator.liu.se/stuff/SurfaceMapTest8.bmp)

[Aradon Templar]: *pokes iippo* What kind of background do you want?

[iippo]: Who would we do? Someone who can float/fly XD

[Aradon Templar]: That'd probably be a good idea, since it will be difficult to make someone standing on a terrain they weren't originally drawn into. Keep in mind, though, that all-sky scenes aren't that great. Personally, I don't know who to do, or have any suggestions or preferences. It'd effect the terrain, of course, so I'd reccomend no firey type people...

[iippo]: So no Hellboy XD And he can't fly. Storm from X-Men? And make all moody, stormy background and s/he floating there with lightnings and stuff..?

[Aradon Templar]: I don't know if I can add in lightning very well... Terragen certainly can't add it, though I might be able to do it in photoshop. Maybe you could do it yourself, or convince Silvie to do a minor edit :D If not, I'll just do that. I'll see when I can do it, though I'm a bit busy for now. Maybe do it Wednesday or Thursday.

[Aradon Templar]: Oiy. Another problem, too. I can work on it soon, but anything I make will be discolored, because my monitor is currently purple. It messed with the Sunken Land attempt (It looks nicely colored on my comp :D).

[iippo]: Purple screen? XD w00tness. Well, do a try-out and I'll see what it looks like. Purpleness might just work really well and add a stormy kind of effect, we never know. And Photoshop can fix color imbalances.

[Aradon Templar]: Nah, the image wouldn't turn out purple. What happens is that I see the image with some purple added to it, so it all looks darker than it really is, so they end up being too light. They might be able to fix that with another program, though. I'll see what happens when I get started on it.

[Aradon Templar]: I got a reprieve on my work, so I went ahead and did a preliminary guesswork type thing. Is this what you had in mind, or do you want something a lot closer, so Storm will be close to the foreground? And is the fog-type thing good? Make comments and suggestions. As I said, it's just a preliminary, so I'm not even going to bother saving the data for this, it's just to give me an idea of what you want. Image: http://elftown.lysator.liu.se/stuff/IS1.bmp

[Aradon Templar]: Oh, and a recent discovery. I recently found out about the weird glow thing, but said skies were off limits with it. Well, I found out a way to bypass that. Does it look merged well, or does the sky still seem weird? It's the same scene as iippo's preliminary, with a blue glow. Image: http://elftown.lysator.liu.se/stuff/GlowCombo.bmp

[iippo]: It looks good, the glow looks really cool! Could the clouds be stormier?

[Aradon Templar]: Yeah, the clouds I'll make lots darker and puffier, I think. As for the glow, I'm not sure. I mean, if you want the bright blue thing there, that'll be easy to do. I'll have to see if it's possible to change its color, though. I'll look into it tonight or tomorrow.

[windowframe]: *blink* *comprehension* Beaches!! Dude, that's what you need - even lakes and Tarns have little beaches, even if they are more dirt than sand.

[Aradon Templar]: Beaches are utterly off limits for Terragen, as it currently is. You try and picture any water colliding with land, and Terragen goes, "What? You want foam? Why on Earth? I think it looks better to just have water collide with land and have no transition between the two." And since I don't really have artistic talent, my pictures are at the will of Terragen :P

[windowframe]: *grin* Fair enough. :D Another Terragen 2 gig, hopefully?

[Aradon Templar]: Oh yesh. Terragen 2 can do anything ^^ And it's supposed to come out sometime... this month. By the date they set at the beginning of this year. I think it'll be pushed back a year, though.

[windowframe]: O.o :D

[iippo]: Was Terragen a free program?

[Aradon Templar]: Well. It's free to download. You have the choice of registering (100 USD), and if you do, you get commmercial rights to sell your artwork, as well as a few minor features that I rarely use, even though I've registered. I'm supposed to get at least a 100 USD discount on Terragen 2, when it comes out, too.

[Aradon Templar]: How's this one, iippo? http://elftown.lysator.liu.se/stuff/PreliminaryStorm2.bmp

[iippo]: Looks pretty good. Is that the larger version, or is there a way for it to be bigger?

[Aradon Templar]: That's about as big as it gets. When I finally make the finished one, it can be as big as you'd like. Any suggestions for changing the scene? I thought it seemed a bit too grey-blurrish in the foreground o.O

[iippo]: Possibly. Although I suppose a mucky foreground is good when the figure will float in the air... all the action will be in the air.

[Aradon Templar]: Alright, I'll tilt the camera a bit higher up next one, so that a little more of the scene is in the air. How about the blue glowish type thing in that one? Should it be stronger, you think?

[iippo]: Not really it's ok like that.

[Aradon Templar]: Well, I'll start the finished one, then. How big would you like it?

[iippo]: ABAP. Making an image smaller is easy, making it bigger is not.

[Aradon Templar]: Heh, it can get really really big. As far as I know, it doesn't mention a limit for maximum size, if you have the program registered ^^'

[iippo]: I likey your program. :D If we'd start thinking of digital photo size, which would be around 3000 pixels wide (you better email this to me instead of uploading to the ET-server) :D

[Aradon Templar]: Alright, I'll render this one in 3000xwhatever, with the same ratio. Did you download the program, by any chance?

[Aradon Templar]: I emailed the picture already, iippo. You should get it in your hotmail account. My apologies if it takes long to load :/ The usual bmp file was too large to send, so I had to convert it to a gif. If that's a problem, I've still got the bmp version.

[iippo]: GIF should be ok. JPG is the only one that loses information when compressed. I got it, by the by :) Looks good.

[Aradon Templar]: Alright ^^ Tell me if there are any problems, and I'll see if I can fix them :)

[iippo]: Meh, I dunno what he should wear - Storm's outfits are always so outrageous that he'll look way gay if I just swap the gender...

[Aradon Templar]: Hm. Give him a suit thing that looks like most super hero costumes, give it some yellow linings, and dark-blue color for the rest.

[iippo]: And short white hair... Can I make his body-hairs white too? *obsession*

[Aradon Templar]: Yes, white hair :D

[windowframe]: Ehm... I've seen Storm in outfits that pretty much resemble 'biker chick'. Big leather boots, lots of black leather, braided hair, all that... dunno what the braids are biker-esque... but... Meh. If that's any help.

[iippo]: Bikerish stuff does help. I've only seen those skin-tight pr0n-stuff... *obviously goes to the wrong sites :P* And silbee, the white rabbit society people seem to agree with us on the Christmas art contest. :D

[iippo]: I'm gonna rip off Modo's outfit from Biker Mice From Mars and make it X-menny XD

[windowframe]: Hmph. Guess it shows they can't be too dull, then.

[iippo]:  Want to show how I'm doing (because at this point change-requests won't make me jump off a building :P) I'll make the figure as life-like as possible, and I'll probably have to domething (blur?) to the background to fit them together better.

[Aradon Templar]: Yeah, the sky might be a bit to sharp to look well blended. Any chance of lightning, you think? *could try to paintshop them in*

[iippo]: Yeah, I'll make lightning spread out from his hair/eye/hand. Suggestions on the figure? Clothes?

[Aradon Templar]: The covered eye is making his face seem a bit dark. Perhaps spread the fingers apart a little, so that a small bit of white shows through? I think the clothes are fine, though maybe the blue's a bit too dark, because it kinda blends in with the skin, but I don't know if there's any way of fixing that without redoing the whole color scheme.

[iippo]: I made the cloak seem like a cloud and blend in a bit with the clouds in the sky... Annndd... I see what I can do about the colours and the hand.

[iippo]: dude! Well cool entry in the Alpha and omega contest! It should be in here!

[iippo]: Another WIP... Meh, I dunno about the hand, I find it better he's squinting that eye. Lightnings will come, don't worry.

[Aradon Templar]: The colors look much better, and I love the cloud. And yeah, the eye seems fine to me now. I think it's cause you added the eyebrow, it lightened his face. That one looks great :D

[iippo]: The next focus will be the boots and that... chest... thing. And then the lightnings.

[iippo]: Preliminary lightnings. Suggestions on boots Very Welcome.

[Aradon Templar]: Dude. Teh lightning rocks. I like the way it kinda follows the shape of the clouds. As for the boots, I'd suggest making them more defined and less blurry. Their shape seems all squiggly to me, because I can't see the black parts of them. I'm not sure how to manage that, though. Perhaps add a little shine on their surface from the lightning? That'd set it apart...

[iippo]: Sort of leathery shiny jaggedness thing? *hunts brother's boots to see how that looks like*

[Aradon Templar]: Heh. If they're leather, I dunno how well that'd work. I thought they were more plastic. Superhero costumes always looked plastic to me o.O I don't know what to do, then, if they're leather :P

[iippo]: Spandex! XD Of course, plastic.

[Aradon Templar]: Well, the suits for some of them, yeah. But in X-Men the cartoons, lots of them looked there were just cool plasic parts on their costumes, too. Or maybe they were metal. Can't recall too clearly.

[iippo]: I'm getting quite happy with it... Anything that should be looked more into, anything I overlooked? Or is it finished?

[Aradon Templar]: Not that I can see. You did a terrific job with it, iippo :D And the shine fixed the boots, like I had hoped :)

[iippo]: Bwee, it's finished! 2 days before I go to England again (=barely in time). Bweebwee.

[windowframe]: why did it need to be finished before you come here?

[iippo]: Because GIMP is plaah and I don't have time in uni (sides uni PhotoShop is less good anyway). It's probable that I won't able to fininsh my moose or It's You I see -entry either... I'll fight to finish te moose tho, it's cool.

[windowframe]: :) *wishes to see le moose* What program you have at home?

[iippo]: PS 7 ME. Chaos Sun's Polar Opposite 2 - entered us. We need a male-Storm name... -_-

[windowframe]: ME.? April Shower. :P

[iippo]: Millenium Edition..? Anyway it rocksors. And it's hard when I've gotten used to the handiness and all of ME and uni has not that... Same as with uni-3DsMax being lesser than work placement Maxes... April shower!?

[windowframe]: Eh, what's the difference between the millenium edition, nd normal PS7? And what does your uni have. Storm's an asexual name anyway, o.O but April Shower Rawks :P

[Aradon Templar]: I think Storm works fine... Kinda fits either way, considering it's a superhero alias anyways.

[iippo]: I dunno, never had 7.0 Uni has 6. *most of all loves to be able to resize brush manually by right clicking* And generally I've noticed I have more control over brushes in ME which I can't with uni PS.

[windowframe]: Blah, fair enough. You can use my ps when you get your ass over to my house :D

[iippo]: What version do you have? And if you want a step up, then tell me I'll make you a copy.

[windowframe]: Just Plain PS7 (hence me asking the difference between it and ME)

[Aradon Templar]: The last two were made with the same water level & landscape. Astonishing what differences you can make just by fiddling with lighting and water settings o.O (And yeah, the sand in the Dunes one is water :D)

[Aradon Templar]: Did someone comment and delete here, or did I just get random comment-linkage? o.O

[iippo]: I commented and deleted because I noticed in the last minute that I was being a little stupid... o.O It was a link to an art contest, but then I went there and read the rules which said "no terragen" so I felt a bit stupid to advertise it here to you.

[Aradon Templar]: o.O Wow, rules specifically included. That's interesting :D

[iippo]: Well it's a contest for stuff done completely on computer, and a landscape contest... And they want PhotoShop etc stuff, not 3D rendering (which i failed to see earleir)

[Aradon Templar]: Mreh. I'm gonna do a new desert one with pyramids now :)

[iippo]: o.O

[Aradon Templar]: It'll take some tweaking, but it can be done, I think. :)

[iippo]: What are you making to pretend the role of pyramids then? Some really unnatural mountains?

[iippo]: >.<;;; And now they've removed the "no terragen" rule in the contest.... Landscape Contest

[Aradon Templar]: I can use bmp images to create scenes, with black areas being lower areas and white areas being higher areas (obviously racist, but it can't be helped), so I'm using a gradient tool in paintshop to create rectangles with stepped levels of darkness. Only problem so far is getting them pointy enough at the top to count as pyramids, and wide enough at their base, though those shouldn't be real problems.

[Aradon Templar]: I'm gonna do a better scene with the same terrain as the Mayan Pyramid later, and enter that one, methinks.

[Aradon Templar]: w00tah: Moon-creation ability: http://elftown.lysator.liu.se/stuff/Moontest1.bmp.jpg . And that was a rough sketch render. I'll do something with this :D

[Aradon Templar]: Heh, have a guess at what this is: http://elftown.lysator.liu.se/stuff/Abstractism.bmp.jpg (rendered completely in Terragen)

[Aradon Templar]: Heh, my brother said that the moons look like meteors, but they're missing the tails. I might try and get you to make a tail for one sometime, and make a real meteor scene :D

[Aradon Templar]: I got some new Terragen software that generates terrain files. It's a lot more comprehensive and complex than Terragen's usual terrain builder, so I can get more realistic or interesting effects a lot easier on it. Hence the terraces in the newest picture. Without the new software, that would've taken massive luck and time, while World Machine took about five seconds :D *wants two waterfalls in the newest picture* They'd fit so perfectly :P

[iippo]: The new one is fantastic! :O

[Aradon Templar]: Glad you like it :) I found out how to use the strata overlay to get the stripes like that. They're not really supposed to go on mountains, but rather cliffsides. But they make my mountain appear more interesting than a hunk of greyish color :D

[iippo]: Some of the most interesting things in the world have been created by using the "wrong tool" for the job. :D

[Aradon Templar]: Heh, this page is even getting big. Must be taking ages for Silvie to load it :\ And yeah, interesting. Not exactly always the nicest things. Terragen can support this easily with all it's plugins to be abused.

[iippo]: I'm trying to make a cunning plan on how to evilly force you to do something for my Magnum Opus project... I can either follow my cunning evil plan, or you can come peacefully and co-operate. :P

[Aradon Templar]: XD I'm very intrigued by your cunning, evil plan of forcefulness and evillity, but on the other hand, I'm always glad to help with stuff if I can. Though I'll warn you (just as I probably did with the X-men thing), I'm probably not talented enough on Terragen to fulfill your wildest dreams :P

[iippo]: I'm a good girl: my wildest dreams aren't that wild at all. :P And the more eyes in the world that know of my project, the better. Trust me, soon you'll be spotting machinities in everything, they're all around us... X_x And when you spot them, you'll tell me and la: my project takes another step towards reality.

[Aradon Templar]: What are these... machinites?

[iippo]: Everything's a machine. o.O Even people. After doing machines all this year of uni... It's like a conspiracy, they are everywhere. It's worse than the Matrix, when you become aware of it. The world is full of machines that you didn't make and you don't know how to use, and that could injure you.

[syagre]: Hi there ! I too am a Terragen artist... (you may check out Syagre @deviantart)... actually, I was wondering about how you had such shades on the water in the pic displayed in your house... did you use any special pluggin, or is it just the consequence of the mixed effects of the cloud shading + variations according to the level of the lakes's bottom ?

[Aradon Templar]: Hm. I can't remember exactly what I did, though I've got a vague idea of things you might try. Usually, I lower light reflectivity a good amount. I drop it from 100% down to at least 30%, and I've done some with as low as 2%. It was probably somewhere around 10% with that picture. That created the blue that covers most of it. The yellow probably was from the clouds, yes. I had a yellow ish atmosphere setting, and probably fiddled a little with the sun coloring, and bumped up the light decay a little, which made the tinge on the clouds yellow. They of course reflected onto the water. Some patches weren't very colored, most likely because I bumped up the patch visibility and sizes, so patches of it were reflective and some of it wasn't.

In short, no, I didn't use a plugin, it was pretty much just clouds mixing with water.

[syagre]: uhm, I sort of guessed that. By the way, would be your computer powerful enough for running Terragen 2 ?? I've been quite amazed by the possibilities shown in the previews ! But looks like I'd have to buy a new PC...

[Aradon Templar]: Eh, sorry for patronising. I wasn't quite sure what you were referring to :\
I don't know if mine would be able to handle it. It looks like it'd be incredibly intensive, and my computer tends to have trouble with anything very large or complex, so I'm thinking that it could handle it, but be very, very slow.

I'm guessing, though, that Planetside's new system will be a little faster in what it does, though the capabilities will be higher; it'd take longer to render the complicated scenes, but I think it'd be comparably faster.

[syagre]: No doubt they have also improve all the routines for calculating the images, as they've implemented all Terragen2's new features ! So it's surely "comparably faster", as you say. But still, I wonder what kind of "beast of a PC" can handle the renderings easily (my old PC needs at least half an hour for big detailed renderings *gasp*)

[Aradon Templar]: Heh, Lakescape (the one on my house) took somewhere around 20 hours, I think. It's all that abominable water that does it. My goodness, never pump up the atmospheric accuracy and ultra smoothing if you have lots of water or clouds, and are rendering supersized x.X But yeah, I can imagine those pictures of the trees and the like are long renders, due to the detail. And just imagine them rendering those hundreds of tiny rocks on their images, it must have thrown the calculations off some. Perhaps people will end up using render farms just for picutres, rather than those animations :P

[syagre]: 20 hours ??? I never get as long as that ! Yeah, it's true that water rendering adds a very long time to it.... but how do you manage to "make tries and get previews" ? I'm used to do basic work in "low-details mode", but if it takes ages for you to do the same, then I wonder...
Then yes, rendering all the tiny rocks, or rendering a tree's leaves, that should be really time-consuming...

[Aradon Templar]: Well, for some of them, I render them for desktop sizes, but when I really like a piece, I'll render it supersized, or three times the desired size, and them resize it down. I've heard various opinions about the effectiveness, but I like the results, so I rendered it at around 3600x2400, and at full levels of accuracy and the like. It piles up really easy, at that point.
Of course, I only up the levels of detail and size when I've got the final image ready, so getting previews isn't usually a problem. Really, the most annoying thing about doing it like that is that it takes a long time to load Terragen while it's rendering, so if I minimize it, and try to check on the progress later, it takes several minutes at least to appear on the screen. If you check to see if it's still running, Windows says that it in fact is Not Responding, which has caused me to end Terragen prematurely, and restart the render with saved settings. It really doesn't freeze, though, Windows just says it does >.>

[syagre]: Oh, I see... actually I'm not a "registered user", so my rendering limit is 1280*960... I never go to extents of 3600*2400 !! No doubt you had so long renderings !
Then, concerning your troubles with windows saying "does not respond" while the rendering is being calculated, I've faced this many times as well... but if it were not rendering, the PC usage would never be 100 % ! Holy windows !

[Aradon Templar]: Eh, I don't even know if 3600x2400 is worth it for all the time it takes. If I can leave it on overnight without any problems, then it's alright, but the only difference is a little smoother of an image, and generally people can't tell the difference between a downsized one and one rendered at the same size. But I think as the surface coloring increases in complexity (2 layers to, say, 15) the downsizing tends to help, because it covers up the smaller gaps that the layers tend to create between the colors.

Oh, and really large terrains, like 527x527, take a lot longer to render too, so I avoid those. They also add a lot of unwanted atmoshperic haze.

[iippo]: Which page do I need to start watching to get updates on your new stuff? o.O

[Aradon Templar]: Heh, sorry. I did faff it all over. The row 9 will have the new updates, but I'll add the titles of new pieces to this page, too, so this one will change when I add something new. Sorry, I was just noticing how painfully long the load time was getting.